Opera Utopia

Presentation

Utopia is a devised documentary opera bringing together professional artists and technicians, the Katowice Social Opera Chorus—young people, senior citizens, incarcerated people and people experiencing homelessness—and students of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music around one question: how can we live together without erasing difference? The project grew from participatory dialogue in Katowice with these communities. It culminated in the Table of Utopia, bringing participants into dialogue with the city, social-policy institutions, culture and business. Its outcome was the 30-member Katowice Social Opera Chorus: a civic-artistic community seeking a lasting space to create together. The project is its next step, rooted in a local paradox: Katowice-GZM is Polish Capital of Culture 2027, yet Katowice has no permanent opera house. The artistic vision searches not for one perfect society but for contemporary utopias: fragile practices of solidarity, listening and responsibility in a polarised world. Rather than beginning with a fixed plot, the opera will emerge from answers to that question. Vocal, writing, movement and sensory laboratories will generate textual, musical and physical material. Beniamin Bukowski will develop a libretto through dialogue with the Chorus, preserving contrasting voices rather than reducing them to a message. Composer Maciej Hennel-Celis will combine those voices with orchestral writing, vocal recordings and percussion co-created in the Remand Prison. Two soloists will move between individual testimony and collective voice. 45 instrumental students will train in contemporary dance and somatic movement, becoming spatial performers. Voice, breath, gesture, orchestra, documentary sound and moving bodies will search for a shared operatic language understood through presence before words. Opera Utopia does not represent a community from outside; it gives an existing community the operatic means to imagine how we might live together.

Artistic Team

Maciej Hennel-Celis – Composer & Sound Designer (German, Polish): Innovative composer bridging classical orchestration with digital soundscapes. He executes the project's sound-weaving method, turning documentary prison recordings into a high-caliber operatic score. Beniamin Bukowski – Co-Librettist & Dramaturg (Polish): Award-winning director and playwright. Expert in documentary theater, responsible for translating the raw workshop testimonies of the Social Chorus into a deeply poetic, cohesive libretto. Tobiasz Sebastian Berg – Director & Choreographer (Polish): Pioneer in cross-disciplinary, socially engaged performing arts, specializing in somatic movement. His expertise in opening up non-professional bodies forms the architectural foundation of the project's staging and public health approach. Evangelos Kosmidis – Co-Dramaturg & Co-Librettist (Greek): Artistic Director of the Mariupol Theatre in Exile, DeVos Fellow, and UNESCO Award winner. He integrates extensive expertise in oral testimony and co-creation with displaced groups to shape the opera's core narrative. Victoria Stevens – Co-Dramaturg & Operatic Advisor (South African): Award-winning opera director and Katie Mitchell mentee. She deconstructs the elitist operatic medium, ensuring maximum somatic accessibility while maintaining top-tier European execution. Basia Binkowska – Stage Designer (Polish): Acclaimed international set designer (Linbury Prize winner). Expert in creating transformative, metaphorical performance spaces that connect live onstage communities with digital installations. Edyta Jermacz – Costume Designer (Polish): Visual artist specializing in eco-upcycling. She leads green textile workshops, co-creating sustainable operatic costumes with the participants to reflect the project's ecological manifesto. Zuza Krajewska – Video Artist & Photographer (Polish): Award-winning filmmaker and photographer working between Warsaw, London and New York.

Partners